Letters to the Editor: June 17 – 23, 2021
F.C. Schools Grade for Past Year is Closer to a ‘F’ Than an ‘A+’
Editor,
Regarding your June 11 editorial “F.C. School Year’s Grade: A Hearty A+,” you seem to have conveniently forgotten that the beginning of the school district’s disappointing descent was the summer of 2020, when the school board attempted to placate the political Left — and a new covey of Left-leaning school officials — with a survey of parents regarding calls to change the names of Falls Church schools.
Never mind your simple, ahistorical assault on two advocates of freedom and responsibility who did not put into practice what they knew to be right.
In October 2020, the survey revealed that 56 percent of the community overall wanted the names to remain on the schools, including 61 percent of the parents of Thomas Jefferson Elementary students and 57 percent of George Mason High parents.
It wasn’t an election, of course. It was a “survey,” the results of which the school board could have used to gain insight into the views of Falls Churchians.
And it could have made its decision based on the survey’s majority opinion.
But it didn’t; it seemed to pit itself against the idea that the essence of democracy is majority rule, the respect of decisions by a vote of more than one-half of all participants.
Despite the survey’s results, and contrary to basic democratic norms, the school board refused to listen.
It seemed to listen to one person especially: Jennifer Santiago, today’s purveyor of the school district’s “equity” indoctrination campaign, who claimed to represent the minority voice in the survey.
“While there are many times majority rules work in issues of equity, it is the opposite that is needed,” Santiago said at the decisive board meeting. “If the majority rule worked for traditionally marginalized groups, we would not have systemic racism.”
Of course, constitutional democracy requires majority rule with minority rights.
We must teach our children to protect the rights of individuals and oppose the tyranny of the majority against minorities. But ignoring the survey’s results, Ms. Santiago and the school board essentially trashed the fundamental principle of our democracy.
And so, as remarkable as it was repugnant, Ms. Santiago, the school board, and its leadership seemed unable to identify undemocratic behavior as undemocratic.
They seemed to believe, at the expense of our children, that tyranny of the minority is completely acceptable.
You have have gravely mistaken this for “moral strength.” That’s a “hearty” F.
Thomas Beal
Falls Church
